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Some kind of ‘mom rite-of-passage.’

After picking up the kiddos, deciding to be spontaneous, bypass the way home, stop in Mevo Beitar to let the kids play in the way-better park, call up Koala’s lil bestie to come, split up an hour later to drive home, put the kids in their car seats, shut the doors, and try to open mine…

I locked the kids in the car.

I tried the doors 21897543 times, pleaded with the keys, tormenting me from the front seat, and then I rallied. I spoke to Koala through the window. He was surprisingly calm. That’s one thing that I kept feeling relieved about – he can rally in the face of panic. We spoke through the window for a few minutes as I tried to tell him how to undo the carseat. He couldn’t do it, though he did follow my instructions pretty well.

I told him I was going to go somewhere, and I’d be right back. I ran back to the park, but none of the kids there had cell phones (aren’t we in Israel for god’s sake?!). So I went back to the kids, then to the nearest house, from which I turned away once I spotted the enormous horse dog guarding the front door.

Ran back to the kids, then back to the second nearest house. Knocked on the door. A guy who looked familiar opened it. He acted like he knew me, and then as we walked to the car together, it hit me – his daughter, perched in his arms, goes to Koala’s gan.

(Can you imagine how odd this must have all been to the boy?)

Anyway, after trying a few things, and refusing to wait for the huz to get back from Modiin or Shagrir to find their way to Mevo Beitar… I decided I wasn’t going to traumatize my kids any more than they already were by waiting outside the car, forty more minutes for help to arrive.

Instead, we broke a window.

And that’s when Koala freaked. And rightly so. It was a violent act, an attack on Ima’s car. So again, I was pretty ok with his ability to rally in the face of violence.

He also had a hard time leaving the thousands of little glass shards on the ground when we drove away… All he wanted was to put them all back…

Both kids were pretty shaken by the time I got them home. The whole thing had been 40 minutes, and we got home and discussed what happened. It’s not the first or second time Koala’s been visibly traumatized, and deconstructing what happened is the best medicine.

So I’m out a window, but at least my kids are ok, it wasn’t a hot day, and they both were able to keep their cool for most of the event.

I guess it’s better this way; I’d rather pay the price of a broken front-seat passenger window than the price of my nearly 3-year-old knowing how to get out of his carseat.